To Prepare For The Future, You Need To Learn To Delight Your Customer

Surprise the other side of the table with a gift
Surprise the other side of the table with a gift

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Just exactly what will it take to make your next negotiation a success? Sorry about this, but it’s not going to be the negotiation styles or negotiating techniques that you use. If we keep in mind the cardinal rule of negotiating that each negotiation is just a single step along a path with the other side of the table, we need to ensure that this negotiation leads to a successful next negotiation. How are we going to make this happen?

The Power Of Delight

The key to making the other side of the negotiating table leave the negotiations with a sense of satisfaction is to find ways to delight them during the negotiations. This is less of a tangible thing and much more of a feeling thing.

I’m sure that you’ve been delighted at some point in your life. The way that this happens is that as you are going along and something unexpected happens that makes you happy. Your happiness grows simply because this is something that you were not expecting.

This sense of “delight” is what you are going to want to cause the other side of the table to experience during your next negotiation. The true power of this is that they will remember this long after the negotiations are over and done with. Since you always have to anticipate that you’ll be negotiating with this party again, this is exactly what you want them to remember!

How You Can Use Delight In Your Next Negotiation

If we can all agree that instilling a sense of delight into the other side of the table is what we want to accomplish during our next negotiation, then this all leads to the big question, how are we going to go about doing this?

The easiest way to cause delight to happen is to give something away to the other side of the table without them even having to ask for it. In the world of selling new and used cars, this is often done by including free floor mats or oil changes into the deal that is being negotiated.

Take a look at what you are negotiating and determine what you could throw in for free. At the right time in the negotiations when there is a lull and when the end of the negotiations is in view, offer it to the other side. This ensures that your offer will be both unexpected and warmly received.

What All Of This Means To You

Smart negotiators know that every principled negotiation with another party may just be the first of many such negotiations. That’s why it is so very important to find ways to “delight” the other side of the table – this is what they’ll end up remembering about the negotiations.

The easiest way to delight the other side is to provide them with something free that they were not expecting. In order to do this, you need determine what they’d like to have and then find the right time to present them with it.

By delighting the other side of the table during your next negotiation, you’ll be setting the stage for your next negotiation with them. They’ll come away from this negotiation happy and pleased and when they show up next time, they’ll be in the mood to reach an agreement with you quickly.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that you should plan to delight the other side of the table multiple times during a negotiation?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So you think that you are hot stuff do you Mr. / Ms. Negotiator? Well, guess what – you still have to live in a place where the law of unintended consequences rules the land. What this means is that all too often, a negotiation can result in consequences that you never saw coming…